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Yoast and wordpress duplicate meta
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I'm using the Yoast plugin with wordpress and have noticed in my HTML I have duplicate meta data.
For example my header starts with
<title>(title) </title<span><<br /><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span>Then I have the 'This site is optimised by Yoast" tagline followed by the same meta -<br /> <span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">name</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:title</span><span>" content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span></span></span>Is this likely to cause problems with Google and is there a way to stop both wordpress and Yoast adding meta to the header. </p></title> -
For reference, with Yoast enabled, you'd expect to see:
<title>TITLE</title>
If your theme is supported by a third-party, you can ask them for assistance, of course.
If it's not built-in to the theme, it could be another SEO/META plugin causing the duplication, perhaps? - One way to test if it is built in to the theme would be to switch (temporarily) back over to a standard wordpress theme and see if the issue persists. If it's still there, try disabling likely plugins and test.
Good Luck!
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It sounds like it might be a theme setting. Some themes come with their own baked-in SEO functionality that can be turned off or on. I'd check that first.
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